After spending much of the day posturing and seeking to sway public opinion, representatives of the two sides involved in the strike at the nation's two largest ports resumed contract talks Thursday night.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, on a trade mission in Brazil, spoke personally to labor representatives and negotiators for the shipping companies, urging both sides to go back to the table.

Talks resumed about 7 p.m. in hopes of resolving an action that began midday Tuesday when workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Office Clerical Unit set up a picket line at the busiest terminal at the Port of Los Angeles. By Wednesday, the walkout had spread to nine more terminals - three in Long Beach and seven in Los Angeles. Many, though not all, of the 800 members of the Office Clerical Unit have been working without contracts since a group of them expired in June 2010.

The clerical unit has a small fraction of the overall port employees, but other bargaining units representing thousands of dockworkers have refused to cross picket lines, effectively shutting down operations at the affected terminals. Officials say three terminals in Long Beach and one in Los Angeles remain open because the union does not have contractual issues with them.

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By container volume, Los Angeles is the busiest port in the United States and Long Beach is the second busiest, according to industry data.

Some of the ships set to arrive in Los Angeles and Long Beach have sailed elsewhere, including Mexico, Alaska and Northern California, officials say, while some have simply been anchored off the coast waiting for the stoppage to end. By Thursday evening, 17 vessels were docked at both ports and another six had dropped anchor off the coast, Port of Los Angeles spokesman Phillip Sanfield said.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit are on strike and walking the picket lines in the rain and waiting for laminated signs to replace their rain soaked signs. selling safety and weather proof gear to those on the lines. Guzman said, "So far business is good." Photo by Brittany Murray / Staff Photographer

Workers are not loading or unloading goods at any of the terminals hit by the work stoppage, and though some cargo is being diverted, the strike is beginning to impact the supply chain, experts say.

"This dispute has impacted not only our port workforce but all stakeholders who ship goods through our complex and potentially the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are directly and indirectly related to port operations," Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Jock(cq) O'Connell, an economist who focuses on trade issues, said that - if this year's shipping flow is similar to last year's - the port closures are stranding about $1.1 billion in merchandise each day.

Retailers generally have the stock they need for the Christmas season, but Khalid Bachkar, an assistant professor at The California Maritime Academy in Vallejo said many manufacturers west of the Mississippi also rely on the port to receive raw materials. He said they usually keep some "safety stock" - or materials they can use in the event of a disruption - but eventually they go through it all.

"If they run out of safety stock, they are in trouble," he said. "Some companies usually have it for a couple of days, some companies have a couple of weeks."

Before the sides agreed to return to the bargaining table, representatives from both management and the union did much of their talking through the public.

Protesters, including this one wearing rain gear, picket APM Terminals at Pier 400 in the Port of Los Angeles for the second day on November 29, 2012.

At around midday Thursday, the employers' lead negotiator, Stephen L. Berry, released a letter he wrote to union President John Fageaux asking him to return to the negotiating table.

"People keep asking me why we have this strike, and I don't know what to say," said Berry, a partner at the downtown law firm of Paul Hastings. "These clerks are making $80,000 a year in salary and $85,000 a year in benefits."

"They are guaranteed their jobs for life. They get four weeks vacation, 21 other days off and free medical care. We offered to increase their compensation (pay and benefits) to $190,000."

Berry said the next set of contracts must stop featherbedding - providing temporary and permanent jobs to employees even when there is no work for them to perform.

"They want us to hire temporary workers, even when we don't need them," Berry said.

For their part, clerical unit leaders say that while they are pleased with the compensation, they want to negotiate a contract that protects against the outsourcing of jobs to other countries and states. Clerical workers provide back-office support for the terminal operators, handling issues like billing.

"The companies say that the work can be automated but what we're finding out is that the work is not being automated, it's being outsourced," striking worker Trinie Thompson said. "We need to keep the work in United States.

Union spokesman Craig Merrilees said striking workers want to ensure as much clerical work as possible remains in Southern California.

"The union wants to have productive, serious talks as soon as possible to address the outsourcing and get this problem solved," he said.

As the strike continued, shippers, retailers and many politicians urged both sides to come to an agreement. In a letter, the National Retail Federation asked President Barack Obama to step into the labor dispute. Under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the president has the power to ask a federal court to issue an injunction forcing both sides to go back to work during an 80-day cooling-off period. That scenario is considered unlikely, at least in the short term.

Also Thursday, 14 members of Southern California's congressional delegation sent a letter to the sides asking them to return to bargaining and settle the dispute. L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa asked them to keep talking, as well.

It's a sentiment echoed by port officials.

"The port is urging both sides to return to the negotiating table as soon as possible and work toward finding a solution to this," Sanfield said.